


Interludes

by Dante_Morgan



Series: Haven & Related Works [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Companion Piece, Developing Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Humor, M/M, Sexual Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-14 13:58:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dante_Morgan/pseuds/Dante_Morgan
Summary: During the hard-earned, brief time of calm Ichigo and his friends have gained for themselves, he and Grimmjow gradually settle into a new routine.Even months after Ichigo's sort-of confession, and Grimmjow's sort-of reciprocation of his feelings, the two still aren't entirely certain of what to call this new dynamic they've got going between them now.While neither of them are the type to sweat the details, they aren't the type to adopt a wait-and-see approach either. So, when Grimmjow realizes that companionship may not be the only thing he wants from Ichigo, things progress rather quickly...





	Interludes

**Author's Note:**

> While this is intended as a companion piece to Haven, it can be read on its own without issue. There are one or two references to Haven that probably won't make much sense if this is your first exposure to this AU, but if you're just here for the smut, then that shouldn't stop you from being able to enjoy this story. 
> 
> It's not like there's a whole lot of plot in here, anyway, which is why I posted it as a separate story in the first place ^^'
> 
> For those wondering about the continuity: this first Interlude takes place during the seven-month timeskip between Haven chapters 37 and 38, specifically on July 15th, Ichigo's birthday.

### Interlude 1

“I know I’ve said it before, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow said, in between shoveling forkfuls of food into his mouth, “but your family is _insane.”_

“Stop. Talking,” Ichigo groaned out, pulling his pillow over his head as he lay face-down on his mattress. From the crackling sounds that accompanied the action, Ichigo could only assume that there were _still_ some paper streamers from the entirely unprompted _and_ unwanted ‘Kurosaki family birthday bash’ stuck in his hair. “And are you seriously still eating?!”

“What?” Grimmjow demanded, probably spitting cake crumbs all over his bed in doing so. “They’re insane, but at least your sister makes good food.”

“...How the hell have you not gotten fat yet?” Ichigo couldn’t help but question.

The bed dipped underneath Grimmjow’s weight as he sat down, and Ichigo could physically feel him shrug. “Lot of exercise?” Grimmjow ventured.

Ichigo shot back up at that, launching his pillow halfway across the room in the process, and narrowed his eyes at Grimmjow. “Using Katsumi for Bankai target practice does _not_ count as exercise.”

“It does when I have to chase him down while lugging half a ton of metal around.”

On the one hand, Ichigo realized that that _did_ in fact count as exercise—in some horrible, twisted way—but on the other, he wasn’t about to go and validate Grimmjow’s actions by admitting so.

“Besides, it’s not like it’s _always_ him,” Grimmjow went on, scraping every last crumb off his plate. “Sometimes I go after Abarai, but he never lasts long. And Shihōin actually _likes_ doing it, so that’s no fun, either.”

“…What did I ever do to deserve you?” Ichigo asked, in a dead tone.

“Don’t go getting all sappy on me, Kurosaki.”

“That is _entirely_ not the way I meant it.”

Grimmjow elbowed him in the back, and Ichigo had to bite back both a yelp and a laugh.

“You’re gonna need a bigger bed, soon,” Grimmjow remarked. Ichigo caught him looking at his feet, which seemed to be inching closer to the edge of the mattress by the day. “You and your friends all grow like a bunch of fucking weeds. Well, except Chad, but I’m honestly starting to think he was just _born_ that tall and never freaking changed.”

“He was not,” Ichigo chuckled, softly kneeing Grimmjow in the tailbone. “And maybe I wouldn’t need a bigger bed if your giant ass didn’t take up half my space every other night.”

“Fuck you, I do _not_ have a giant ass,” Grimmjow growled, obsessively shoveling the last few cake-crumbs into his mouth. Ichigo threw a pointed look at his empty plate. “…Shut up.” Setting the plate aside, Grimmjow abruptly lunged forward and clamped a hand over Ichigo’s face before pushing him flat against the bed. “Seventeen now, huh?” he murmured, rubbing his thumb over one of Ichigo’s cheeks. “You’re almost as tall as me now, yet you still can’t grow a beard to save your damn life.”

Ichigo, who had frozen up like a startled possum upon being grabbed like that, abruptly (and violently) leapt back into motion. “What?! Screw you!” he snapped, wrenching Grimmjow’s hand away. “I can totally grow a beard!”

“Peach fuzz does _not_ count as a beard, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow shot back, wearing that infuriating smirk of his.

 _“P-peach fuzz?”_ Ichigo sputtered out in affront. “It is _not—_ that’s not even—I don’t want to hear that from _you!”_ Ichigo eventually settled on. “Your head is like the _only_ place on your body you’ve got any hair on! You’re like… like Ikkaku, but in reverse!” Ichigo accused, pointing a finger straight at Grimmjow’s nose. He had to go cross-eyed to watch it.

“So what? It’s called being aerodynamic, Kurosaki,” he said smugly, batting Ichigo’s finger away from his face.

“It’s called being a freaking bikini model, you mean,” Ichigo muttered under his breath, and had to roll off the bed and onto the floor to avoid the jab Grimmjow directed at his kidneys in response. Ichigo was pretty sure he heard something behind him rip as he hit the ground. “If you just shoved your hand through my mattress, you’re paying for a new one,” Ichigo threatened, cautiously getting back to his feet.

“Oh, calm your tits, it was just the cover,” Grimmjow grumbled, withdrawing his hand.

“Then you’re paying for a new mattress cover,” Ichigo shot back, with a glare. “I’m gonna go take a shower. I think I might actually have confetti down my crack.”

* * *

Once Ichigo was finally done with his shower, Grimmjow slipped into the Kurosaki family’s only bathroom as soon as it was vacated, ignoring the feistier of the two Kurosaki sisters hammering her fists on the door behind him while yelling some frankly impressive profanity for a thirteen-year-old.

The room was still blessedly warm from when Kurosaki had been in here, and Grimmjow wasted no time at all in ripping his clothes off and tossing them to the floor. To his credit, a good forty percent of them landed within the general vicinity of the laundry basket this time. He was totally getting better at this whole ‘being considerate’-thing.

He hopped into the shower stall, and sighed in contentment when he didn’t even have to wait for the water to turn warm. As it cascaded down his body, Grimmjow felt his every muscle relax, and did his best not to melt into a happy little puddle on the floor. Hot showers may have just been the single best thing humans had ever invented.

He randomly grabbed a bottle of what he assumed was shower gel, and began to work it into his hair. It smelled like… like…

Fuck. Strawberries. He must have grabbed Yuzu’s bottle again.

Kurosaki was totally going to give him shit for that later.

Still, Kurosaki was growing up _crazy_ fast. Was that shit even normal for humans? Grimmjow honestly doubted it. It was like every time he looked away for a second Kurosaki would grow another inch taller, or pack on another pound of muscle. His facial features had become much more defined lately, and as much as Grimmjow loved to talk shit about his lack of facial hair, there was in fact some coarser orange stubble starting to show up here and there, not that he'd ever admit it.

Besides, Kurosaki was full of shit, too. Grimmjow _totally_ had body hair. It just happened to be limited to his—

Grimmjow looked down at his crotch, and froze up before he could finish his thought. He was being stared back  _at_ _._ Frantically, Grimmjow poked his head (the one on his shoulders) out of the shower stall and looked around the bathroom, just to make absolutely sure that the door was still locked, and no-one was there to see him like this. He slid the stall door shut again, and looked down again to double-check.

Fuck. It was still there. Now what?

_“Dammit, Jaegerjaquez! Would you hurry the hell up already?! You’re using up all the hot water, you giant blue dick!”_

Grimmjow whirled around so fast he almost smacked his erection against the stall door. _“Wait your turn, dammit!”_ he yelled back, resenting the fact that his voice cracked halfway through his sentence.

_“I DID!”_

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, _Fuck._

Maybe if he just ignored it, it would go away.

Grimmjow powered through the rest of his shower at record speed, resolutely not thinking about _why_ he would possibly pop his first-ever, non-morning boner in the Kurosaki family’s tiny shower stall, _while_ thinking about Kurosaki. That train of thought couldn’t possibly lead anywhere good.

He hopped out of the stall with his heart still in his throat, toweled off his hair and upper body while throwing half-panicked glances at the mirror every other second, and only when he finally got tired of seeing his own wide eyes staring back at him did he dare look down again.

Grimmjow was pretty sure that no Hollow before him had ever felt _this_ relieved to see their own dick pointing downwards the way it should.

All the stress melted right out of him as he let out a shuddering breath, and he hurried to pull on a fresh pair of boxer briefs. It was probably best to trap it while he had the chance, he reasoned, before it got any more rebellious ideas in its… head.

He looked at his reflection one more time, shook out his limp, blue hair, and sucked in a fortifying breath before pulling the bathroom door open. He was immediately faced by a tiny, black-haired, _furious_ -looking midget Kurosaki. “What do you want, twerp?” he sneered down at her.

Very slowly, the eldest Kurosaki sister lifted a hand, and poked him in his bare abdomen with a single, pointy fingernail. Grimmjow refused to give her the satisfaction of twitching.

“I don’t even care that you’re a half-naked soul-eater two times my height and four times my weight,” she enunciated slowly. “If you ever, _ever,_ steal my shower again, I am punching you in the dick.”

She then shouldered past him, shrugged out of her top, tossed it down on top of his own discarded clothes (two feet removed from the laundry basket), and loudly kicked the door shut behind her.

Grimmjow could honestly say he liked both Kurosaki sisters. Girls had spunk.

He padded barefoot down the hallway and made his way into Ichigo’s room. Ichigo was already in bed, but looked up when Grimmjow entered, and threw his head back into his pillow at what he saw. “Did you seriously walk down the hallway in your underwear?” he groaned. “What if my sisters saw you?!”

“Hate to break it to you, but your sisters are nowhere near as innocent as you think, Kurosaki,” he shot back. “The angry one just threatened to punch me in the dick.”

Ichigo dragged his hands over his face. “Well, I’m sure you did something to deserve it,” he muttered. “Now turn the damn lights off already. You getting in or what?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Grimmjow mumbled under his breath. He hit the light switch before slipping under the covers as well, feeling the warmth of Ichigo’s back pressing against his own as he lay down.

“Night, Grimm,” Ichigo muttered sleepily, and Grimmjow grumbled back something incomprehensible, already feeling sleep carry him off the very moment his head hit the pillow.

* * *

Ichigo woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of cursing. Cursing _and_ squirming. Very slowly, he turned around to face the bed’s other occupant. “What… the _hell…_ are you doing?”

Grimmjow abruptly froze up, and Ichigo’s suspicion skyrocketed. “Nothing,” Grimmjow replied, after a pause that was just a beat too long, and in a voice that was half an octave too high. “Go back to sleep, Kurosaki.”

“…Why are you curled up in the fetal position?”

“I am _not_ in the fetal position,” Grimmjow denied, curling up just a bit tighter into the fetal position.

Ichigo blinked at him, decidedly unimpressed. “Oookay then.” Instead of going back to sleep, Ichigo turned around fully, planted his elbow into the mattress, and rested his head atop his fist. He then proceeded to stare intently at the back of Grimmjow’s head.

Ichigo could almost _hear_ him start to sweat.

“I can do this all night, you know,” he blithely informed Grimmjow, and the man stiffened even further if possible, before deflating entirely.

“...Don’t fucking laugh,” Grimmjow ordered gruffly.

“No promises.”

Grimmjow finally uncurled, and plopped back down on his back. He stared at Ichigo with wild eyes. “It won’t go away,” he hissed out from between clenched teeth.

Ichigo blinked again. “…What won’t?”

The question appeared to be causing Grimmjow actual, physical pain. Ichigo watched him twist his mouth into several different shapes as he struggled to answer, transition into straight-up glaring while attempting to fight off his nervous eye-twitch, before finally shooting a single, furtive glance off to the side.

Ichigo followed his gaze, saw nothing, and re-established eye-contact. “I honestly don’t know what the hell that was supposed to tell me,” he stated flatly.

Grimmjow looked seconds away from killing someone at this point. Probably himself, if death by self-inflicted aneurysm counted. “It won’t,” he ground out, making a sharp head-movement toward his lower half, “go _away.”_

Ichigo stared a bit longer. “Oh,” he eventually gasped in realization. “… _Oh!”_ For some inexplicable reason, launching himself backwards and out of bed seemed like an entirely reasonable response to the situation just then.

“What the hell, Kurosaki?!” Grimmjow hissed out, looking down at him like he was a lunatic as he lay sprawled out on the floor, rubbing the back of his head.

“That’s my line!” Ichigo whispered back, righting himself. “What were you planning on doing with… with _it,_ anyway?!”

“I was trying to _hide_ it, you colossal fuckhead!” Grimmjow bit back. “What the hell else would I do with it?!”

“I don’t know!” Ichigo whisper-yelled desperately. “Why didn’t you just… get rid of it, if it bothered you that much?!”

“What do you mean, ‘get rid of it’?!” Grimmjow whisper-yelled right back in obvious horror, with far more emphasis on the ‘yelled’-part. “I’m not gonna cut off my—!”

“That’s _obviously_ not what I meant!” Both of them were breathing heavily by this point. “Just… just go take care of it in the bathroom or something!”

“Take care of it _how?!”_

They stared at each other, wide-eyed, for what seemed like an eternity. Entire stars had been born and already died again in the time it took for Ichigo to force out his answer. “Go… to the bathroom… and jerk off, like a normal person.”

Another small eternity passed during the silence that followed. The black holes that remained of the aforementioned stars had all the time they needed to evaporate through Hawking Radiation by the time Grimmjow finally responded. “…Oh,” he said. “Well, why the fuck didn’t you just say so in the first place?!”

“I can’t believe you made me say it at all!” Neither of them moved. “Well?!” Ichigo demanded, “why the hell aren’t you doing anything?!”

“I’m not gonna sneak over to your shitty bathroom just to go play with my dick!” Grimmjow complained. “That’s fucking stupid!”

“No!” Ichigo shot back, almost manic. “This! _This,_ right here, is what’s fucking stupid!” he ranted, gesturing wildly at their whole… everything.

Both of them stayed where they were until their breathing returned to normal. “Kurosaki?” Grimmjow eventually piped up again. Ichigo looked up at him. “Get the fuck back into bed. I’m going to sleep.”

“…Fine.”

Ichigo climbed back in and returned to his usual position lying back-to-back with Grimmjow. It was obvious from the start that neither of them was going to get any actual sleep, and ten minutes of stewing in silence didn’t change that fact.

“It’s not going away, is it?” Ichigo asked, once he couldn’t take the awkward, oppressive silence anymore.

“…You think?”

Ichigo sighed. “Just… just take care of it here, then,” he muttered awkwardly. “I mean, we’re… _something_ now _,_ anyway, so just… you know.”

“We're  _something?_ What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Grimmjow asked, frowning.

“Well, what would you call it?!” Ichigo bit back. “We’ve been sleeping in the same bed on and off for the past few months, but we haven’t actually done anything beyond that, so I don’t know what this is supposed to be! Besides, it’s not like you’ve got anything I haven’t already—oh.”

“’Oh’?”

Ichigo found himself immensely grateful for the lack of any light sources in his bedroom. “Well, I was gonna say I’ve already seen you naked, but I just realized I’ve never actually seen you… you know.” He swallowed. “Hard.”

“…Oh,” Grimmjow concurred. Then, “…Do you want to?”

For several perilous moments, Ichigo stopped breathing. “I—I ah. I guess?” Ichigo squeaked out, feeling all the blood rush straight to his face.

“You just sounded like a fucking chipmunk,” Grimmjow commented.

“S-shut up!” Ichigo whirled around. “You’re the one who just asked me if I wanted to see your—your… _you know!”_

The fact that Grimmjow was the planet’s single biggest cockhole was proven right once again, since seeing Ichigo’s ever-rising embarrassment and borderline panic actually seemed to be making _him_ more calm and confident by the minute. “Well, it’s better than having you just lie there and listen to me jacking it, like some fucking creep.”

Ichigo opened his mouth, only to find that he had no way of refuting that statement. “Well. I mean…” he started, never to finish his sentence since that was when, after a bit of wriggling, Grimmjow pulled his boxer briefs out from underneath the sheets, and dropped them on the floor. All the blood rushed back _out_ of Ichigo’s face as it abruptly migrated southward instead, and appeared to have taken all of his saliva down with it since his throat suddenly felt drier than Hueco Mundo’s desert.

“…Oh,” he said again, brightly, as Grimmjow bared each and every one of his teeth in a cocky smirk. Then he pulled the sheets down.  _“…Oh,”_ Ichigo squeaked, as he laid eyes on it. It was… well. Um _._ Ichigo found he didn’t really have any words for it.

Ichigo wasn’t sure he would _ever_ have any words again.

Breathless, he watched as Grimmjow wrapped a hand around his length, and got to work. Once he did however, the only thing Ichigo could think to say was:

“…What are you even doing?” he blurted, and Grimmjow instantly stopped to glare at him.

“The fuck does it look like I’m doing, Kurosaki?!”

“Sucking at jerking off?” Ichigo questioned in disbelief. He was no expert, but whatever the hell _that_ had been didn’t seem like it could have been all that pleasurable. “Have you ever even done this before?”

“I was a fucking Espada!” Grimmjow snapped back. “I had better shit to do then play with my dick all day long, like trying not to get killed by any of the other fuckers gunning for my rank! And even if I _had_ wanted to, I wasn’t about to go whip it out with that creep Szayel’s cameras hidden in every corner of the goddamn castle!”

“…You could have just said no,” Ichigo replied, unimpressed. Then, with his best shithead smirk, he teased: “Do you need me to show you how it’s done?” His smirk widened when Grimmjow's confident expression faltered and gave way to nervousness for a moment. Unfortunately, that moment didn’t last very long.

Grimmjow swallowed, and removed his hand from where it had still been wrapped loosely around his shaft. Instead, he put it behind his head, and leaned back against the wall. “Alright. Go ahead, Kurosaki. Show me,” he ordered, a challenging glint in his eyes.

…Of course Grimmjow would call his bluff. _Fuck._

Still, it was a matter of pride, at this point. Ichigo leaned forward, and slowly reached out with one hand. He hesitated once he was within grabbing distance, and actually considered calling it quits, but then he saw how Grimmjow’s expression was returning to ‘smug’, and stubbornly wrapped his hand around it in a firm grip, instead.

Grimmjow _hissed,_ and when Ichigo registered the sound, his own dick made a valiant attempt at spearing straight through his underwear and pajamas both. If he could make Grimmjow hiss just from touching him… Ichigo wondered what other reactions he could get out of him if he put some actual effort in.

He started stroking at a slow, languid pace, intently watching Grimmjow’s face and physically feeling the reverberations of the groan Grimmjow let out in response within the palm of his hand. Then, once he was sure that Grimmjow was well and truly into it, he started experimenting a little more.

He switched up the pace, adjusted his grip strength, and even pulled Grimmjow’s foreskin all the way back so he could spread the drop of precum at the tip out over his exposed glans in a moment of daring. When he did _that_ , Grimmjow’s entire body had gone tense, his fingers and toes curling up, and Ichigo found he had to readjust himself after his own cock gave a particularly enthusiastic twitch in response.

He had done it without thinking, but Grimmjow took immediate notice of the movement, and wrapped a hand around Ichigo’s wrist, guiding it back to the elastic of his underwear before Ichigo could pull away from it. “The hell are you still wearing those for?” Grimmjow grunted with a heavy, breathless voice and half-lidded eyes. “Take ‘em off, Kurosaki,” he ordered, and okay, yeah, Ichigo would admit that that voice _did_ certain things to him.

“A-alright,” he acquiesced, and released Grimmjow for just long enough to shimmy out of his own clothes. His cock sprang free of his underwear, and for a second, Grimmjow actually looked like he was about to whimper at the sight of it.

Well. That was an ego-booster all right.

Bolstered by this new source of confidence, Ichigo chuckled and sat up on his knees, dick proudly jutting forward. “Move over to the middle,” he told Grimmjow, who needed a moment to process the command, but didn’t hesitate to obey once he had. “And keep your legs closer together.”

Again, Grimmjow did as asked, and Ichigo swung one leg over his waist before slowly lowering himself again. Both of them groaned when their cocks brushed together, their voices growing louder still when Ichigo took both of them in his hand and _really_ pressed them up against each other.

Not about to be left out, one of Grimmjow’s hands joined his, and together they began pumping up and down, quickly falling into a pace that both found sufficiently pleasing. Their breaths progressively quickened, and it wasn’t long before Grimmjow became unable to restrain himself and started bucking his hips, cursing when the movement caused him to tug a bit too hard at his own frenulum due to the shortage of lubrication, in spite of the frankly impressive amount of precum he was producing.

“Hang on,” Ichigo muttered when he noticed the problem, reaching up to brush his sweaty hair out of his eyes with his free hand before spitting into his palm. He spread out his improvised lubricant somewhat, then reached down to switch hands.

“Kurosaki, what the hell are you— _ah!”_

A litany of grateful swears tumbled from Grimmjow’s lips once he realized he could now thrust as hard as he wanted, and he didn’t hesitate to take advantage of this newfound freedom. His thrusts were wild and unpracticed, only becoming more so as he neared his release, and it wasn’t long at all before he spilled his seed all over their hands and his own stomach.

Grimmjow let out a long, low groan and made a few more uncontrolled thrusts as he rode out his orgasm, then fell limply—in both senses of the word—back against the bed.

Ichigo slowed his strokes, still needing a little more to get there himself, and simply watched Grimmjow with a lazy grin. “You good?”

For a second or two, it looked like Grimmjow was just going to fall asleep right then and there, but then his eyes snapped open again and pinned Ichigo with a look more intense than anything he could have managed himself, just then. “Do that again.”

Ichigo let out a bark of surprised laughter. “Seriously? You _just_ finished—you’re gonna need a few minutes before— _crap that was fast!”_ Ichigo’s voice abruptly rose in pitch when Grimmjow’s hand returned to squeeze their lengths back together, and he could feel Grimmjow already hardening again, before he’d even gone fully limp.

Ichigo was pretty sure that, out of the two of them, _he_ was supposed to be the horny teenager here.

“Dude, gross,” Ichigo complained weakly when Grimmjow smeared his own release all over them to act as additional lubricant, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to stop him.

“You just smeared your own slobber all over my dick, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow admonished him, already going short of breath again at the renewed stimulation. “You don’t get to fucking complain.”

“Who said I was complaining?” Ichigo shot back with a weak little laugh, planting one hand beside Grimmjow’s head before leaning forward, so that he would have a better angle to thrust into their hands.

Their pace quickened as their release neared, and Ichigo felt Grimmjow’s free hand sliding up between his sweat-slicked, orange spikes, pulling his head down to rest within the crook of Grimmjow’s neck.

It felt good—hell; it felt really, _really_ damned good actually, but Ichigo desperately wanted—no, _needed_ to come at this point, and required just a bit more stimulation to push himself over the edge with. He let his hand travel upward along their lengths until he reached their sensitive tips, then squeezed, pressing them even more flush together than they already were.

A renewed deluge of curses poured from Grimmjow’s lips, and for once, Ichigo joined in with him, spitting out more filth in the span of thirty seconds than he had in the past _month_. They transitioned to shallow, rapid thrusts; aimed at creating as much friction as possible between each other’s cockheads and the hot, moist cavern created by Ichigo’s hand, and finally Ichigo felt his own orgasm rushing through him with almost overwhelming intensity.

He buried his head in Grimmjow’s neck as his lower body convulsed, and felt strong fingers dig into his scalp as Grimmjow too reached his climax, for the second time in his case.

Once he came down from his post-coital high, Ichigo could only work up enough energy to fall over sideways rather than collapse directly on top of Grimmjow, and chuckled disbelievingly when he saw the mess they’d made. It hadn’t just gotten on Grimmjow’s stomach either, but it was all the way up to his chest, and even on his clavicle, too. “I can’t… can’t believe we just did that,” he panted, still somewhat delirious off the high of his own, mind-blowing orgasm.

“I can’t believe we never fucking did it before,” Grimmjow shot back, equally stupefied.

Ichigo laughed softly, shaking his head. “Guess we’d better make up for lost time, then.” He sucked in one last, big gulp of air, before he switched to breathing through his nose again. “You need a tissue?”

“ _One_ tissue? I’m gonna need the whole fucking box,” he grumbled, looking down at himself. “Christ, Kurosaki, were you trying to hit me in the chin, or what?”

Ichigo was unable to stop himself from snorting at that, and he shook his head as he pressed the tissue box into Grimmjow’s hands. “Like hell! Besides, how do you even know if that was me?” Grimmjow opened his mouth, but Ichigo was quick to cut him off again. “No. We are _not_ having an argument about who jizzed on who,” he intoned sternly.

“Why not? We’ve argued over dumber shit than this,” Grimmjow shot back.

“…You know, I honestly don't think we have.”

The two of them stared at each other, but Ichigo was forced to look away when Grimmjow’s mouth curved into a crooked grin, and he couldn’t stop his own laughter from escaping anymore. “What the hell are we even doing?” he chuckled. “This has to be like… the single most messed-up relationship ever.”

“Probably is, but who gives a shit?” Grimmjow asked, and Ichigo couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. Grimmjow carelessly tossed the wadded-up, dirty tissues as well as the box he had gotten them from to the ground, and let his head drop back down onto the pillow. “Now are we going back to sleep or what? I’m fucking exhausted after all that.”

“God, yes,” Ichigo agreed emphatically, and flopped down next to him. There was a brief but intense scuffle over who got to put his arm in the middle of the frankly too-small bed, now that they were lying side-by-side, rather than back-to-back as they had gotten accustomed to. Ichigo won said scuffle by virtue of having pointier elbows and not being afraid to use them, and Grimmjow grudgingly slung his arm out to the side, so that Ichigo could rest his head in the crook of his elbow. His arm was all but guaranteed to be completely numb come morning, and Ichigo was absolutely going to make fun of him for it when they woke up.

It was the little things that made it all worth it, Ichigo thought to himself, as he lay naked in bed with another man who had not only tried to kill him on several occasions, but had also saved his life twice over by now, and had _been_ saved by Ichigo just as many times.

…God, his life was insane.

Still, he’d tried 'normal' once already, and clearly, it didn’t agree with him. Not anymore, at least. And this? Whatever it was that he and Grimmjow had now? He could honestly say he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I plan to write two more chapters of this at a later date, but only once I'm finished with Haven itself, so don't expect any updates until September, at the earliest.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> (Click here to go straight to Haven [Chapter 38](https://archiveofourown.org/works/677896/chapters/34485992))


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